How many gangs?

So-called “Type 1 offenders” target young people “on the basis of their vulnerability, rather than as a result of a specific preferential sexual interest in children”.

Ceop received intelligence from 31 out of 43 police forces on groups like this who were known or suspected to have abused vulnerable children in 2012.

There were 57 such groups, ranging from two to 25 suspects, on the radar of those 31 constabularies. We don’t know if any have now been convicted.

So-called “Type 2” groups – where the offenders have a long-standing sexual interest in children, were much less common. Only seven known or suspected paedophile rings were reported to Ceop.

It is possible to track cases that have been through the courts via media reports, although this is pretty unscientific.

In 2011 the Times journalist Andrew Norfolk identified 17 cases that had led to convictions where there had been a similar pattern of grooming.

In all cases, the victims were vulnerable teenage girls, often in the care of social services. They were approached on the street by men, befriended and plied with alcohol or drugs, before being sexually abused.

Updating the list to include more recent convictions that fit the same pattern, we find that there have been at least 27 similar cases in the last decade.

This is based on a trawl of news sources so is almost certainly incomplete.

Race and religion

The Jay report into failings in Rotherham says: “By far the majority of perpetrators were described as Asian by victims, yet throughout the entire period, councillors did not engage directly with the Pakistani-heritage community to discuss how best they could jointly address the issue.

“Some councillors seemed to think it was a one-off problem, which they hoped would go away. Several staff described their nervousness about identifying the ethnic origins of perpetrators for fear of being thought racist; others remembered clear direction from their managers not to do so.”

Ceop data about the ethnicity of offenders and suspects identified by those 31 police forces in 2012 is incomplete.

The unit says: “All ethnicities were represented in the sample. However, a disproportionate number of offenders were reported as Asian.”

Of 52 groups where ethnicity data was provided, 26 (50 per cent) comprised all Asian offenders, 11 (21 per cent) were all white, 9 (17 per cent) groups had offenders from multiple ethnicities, 4 (8 per cent) were all black offenders and there were 2 (4 per cent) exclusively Arab groups.

Of the 306 offenders whose ethnicity was noted, 75 per cent were categorised as Asian, 17 per cent white, and the remaining 8 per cent black (5 per cent) or Arab (3 per cent).

Ceop identified 144 victims of the Type 1 groups. Again, the data was incomplete. Gender was mentioned in 118 cases. All were female. Some 97 per cent of victims were white.

Girls aged between 14 and 15 accounted for 57 per cent of victims. Out of 144 girls, 100 had “at least one identifiable vulnerability” like alcohol or drug problems, mental health issues or a history of going missing. More than half of the victims were in local authority care.

The 27 court cases that we found led to the convictions of 92 men. Some 79 (87 per cent) were reported as being of South Asian Muslim origin.

Three were white Britons, two were Indian, three were Iraqi Kurds, four were eastern European Roma and one was a Congolese refugee, according to reports of the trials.

Considerable caution is needed when looking at these numbers, as our sample is very unscientific. There are grooming cases we will have missed, and there will undoubtedly be offences that have not resulted in convictions.

Why are so many victims white?

We’re into the realm of opinion now.

Sentencing nine men in 2012 over offences in Rochdale, judge Gerald Clifton told the defendants they had treated their victims “as though they were worthless and beyond all respect”, adding: “I believe that one of the factors that led to that was that they were not of your community or religion.”

But at the Derby trial in 2010 the judge said he thought the race of the victims and their abusers was “coincidental”.

One of the victims of the Oxford gang told the Guardian that her abusers had asked her to recruit other teenagers and “specified that they wanted only white girls”.

Ceop says: “The comparative levels of freedom that white British children enjoy in comparison to some other ethnicities may make them more vulnerable to exploitation.

“They may also be more likely to report abuse. This is an area requiring better data and further research.”

How many children are at risk?

A report by the Office of the Children’s Commissioner found that 2,409 children were confirmed as victims of sexual exploitation in gangs and groups in the 14 months between August 2010 to October 2011.

If that sounds low compared to the 1,400 identified in Rotherham alone, remember that this number covers 16 years.

This probably only scratches the surface of the real number of victims, and the children’s commissioner said that at least 16,500 children had been identified as being “at risk of sexual exploitation” during one year.

19 reader comments

billie Windsorsays:

Surely all councils and police should now be checked, this cannot just be a Rotherham problem, London, Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester, nor should it be restricted to labour or long serving majority’s. I am sure everyone who has reported concerns re vulnerable young people being exploited/ groomed are told ‘we’ police social service are dealing with this, or words to that effect.

I notice that the attention of much of the media has now passed on – except for the continuing scapegoating of certain individuals. Much as that satisfies people’s need to see a balancing of the moral scales, it serves only minimally to tackle the underlying problems.
1. Visibility
2 credibility of those girls seeking help
3 fear of being accused of racial prejudice
4 ignorance
5. money & resources
But this anti-EU Tory converting to UKIP is obviously much more important!
Please keep going on about issues like grooming gangs & keep the pressure on the authorities to tackle the problems. Don’t just focus on today’s issue, however triial it may be. Frankly compared to what these girls went through I don’t care whether Douglas Carswell wrapped himself in the union jack and invaded the EU building in Brussels. Can’t we get some perspective on what’s REALLY important?

The figures given in this report are deceptive because they ignore the relative proportions of each ethnic group within the national population.
For example: From a national population of Asian, Arab, Black and Roma Gypsies comprising no more than 10%…we find they were responsible for almost 90% of such crimes!
This is massively disproportionate.
The person who wrote this piece isn’t innumerate. They must know they glazed over this fact. Which tells me that the same old politically correct cowardice which allowed such abuse to go unchallenged for so long, still runs very deep.

While I agree with the proportion thing. However, as an international student from India, living in the UK for 4 years and paying £14,000 tuition fee a year from my parents pocket, I never consider myself an Asian. Outside the UK, and especially in North America, Asians are the people from China, Japan, Korea, etc, not from India. I do get extremely offended when people refer to Indians as Asian. Indians are different from the other Asians. From the figures, you can notice that out of 92 convicted men, only 2 were Indians. I bet none of those 2 were Hindus. I’m an ex-Hindu pantheist though. I don’t believe in any personal god either. However, Indians in the UK have the lowest poverty rate after white Britons. Indians are also the least likely to claim benefits. 85% of Indians living in the UK own a house. The birth rate of Indians is also as low as White Britons. I know many Indians that are really weird. But us Indians are not as bad as other ‘Asians’ as you would call it. Some Indians do indulge in fraudulent transactions. However, they are a minority living in shit places like Southall and Wembley. We pay more taxes than all the ethnic minorities combined. The Chinese may be as good as us, but Indians have more in common with Britain than them. Also, there are 3 Indians in the top 10 richest list of UK residents. I’m not saying that there aren’t any good Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. Of course, there are! However, there is a massive conservative orthodox culture prevalent in the second generation Pakistani Muslims in England, that we have to spread awareness in. Also, I believe if young British Pakistanis are convicted of these heinous acts, they shouldn’t be given halal meat in the prison. That may deter some of them from committing it.

It’s funny how you hone in on the disproportionate representation of ethnic minorities involved in the grooming of type 1 grooming but ignore the prevalence of white males in type 2 grooming. If grooming vulnerable girls is a problem within South Asian/ Muslim problem, then paedophile gangs is exclusively a problem for white indigenous Brits based on these findings. In relation to the type 1 grooming of girls in this country, I recall growing up hearing the narrative that “girls are more mature than boys” bounded around throughout my youth and observed 13-15 year old girls dating adult men in keeping with that ridiculous and very western narrative. I myself am deeply offended by the idea of anybody having relations with someone inappropriately aged. However from what I can see it is the norm in this country where teenage girls are encouraged to fantasise about adult pop stars before acting out these fantasies locally with older men. Yes there is a cultural problem the poor supervision of vulnerable white girls and also cultural beliefs about white women in general which were held by white men firstly before being taken on by ethnic minorities. To see these views in action you merely need to observe the behaviour of British teens on holiday in Spain or Greece. If you devalue British women in such a manner outsiders looking on will assimilate the same views. What we’re seeing here is Britain’s chickens coming home to roost.

Totally agree with Billie, Philip and Wilson. This is one of the most horrific set of crimes to have taken place for decades or more. A systematic, organised and cleverly targeted violent abuse, and rape of vulnerable and often very young children. The culprits still walk the streets and it’s increasingly clear that the police, council members and social care staff deliberately turned a blind eye to what was happening. Yet no one has been arrested!. Have we lost our collective mind? I hate to think of the riots on the streets if the culprits had been mainly white men targeting Asian girls or the uproar if middle class girls had been picked on. However, and presumable because these are ‘just’ some poor lower/ working class girls and no one has the guts to accept that the culprits were practising an obscene and violent form of racism against what they saw as a ‘degenerate population ‘ ( more or less the words I believe of one Asian commentator who did have the guts to say what no white person would say)’ there seems to be a collective embarrassment about the whole thing and an unspoken wish that it would go away. Totally abhorrent.

Wilson’s point was that significant facts were left out of the article. The point may be debatable, but it is a fair one and an important one.

Let’s add two simple facts from the 2009 census. 87.9% of the population was White and 7.7% of the population was Asian (including Chinese) or mixed-Asian.

Add the facts stated in the article that 17% of offenders whose ethnicity was identified were White and 75% were Asian, and a very interesting statistic arises: Asians are at least 50 times more likely to be members of child-abusing gangs than Whites.

I say ‘at least’, because I have deliberately taken the definition of ‘Asian’ as wide as possible. If all the ‘Asian’ offenders were Pakistani, then it transpires that Pakistanis are 211 times more likely to be members of child-abusing gangs than Whites (because Pakistanis made up 2.1% of the population in 2009).

Now a very important disclaimer: THE OFFENDING DATA IS SELECTIVE.

However, Channel 4 FactCheck suggests that it is the best data available. Since the best available data indicates that Asians are at least 50 times more likely to be in child-abusing gangs than Whites, isn’t that an issue that deserves to be thoroughly and responsibly investigated?

In this case, I’m afraid I agree with Wilson. The Channel 4 team ‘glazed over’ a very important issue, and I would like to understand why.

A footnote. You (Shayan Ali) suggest that celebrity child abusers are ‘much worse’ than other child abusers. It is entirely beyond me to understand why you would labour this strange and self-evidently fallacious point, unless it was to deflect attention from the subject of the article.

Then they were wrong. The 50x statistic is something that most people reading the article would have absolutely no conception of. It is the most important statistic that lies behind this article, but it was left unspoken.

All healthy females have a sex drive that is a fundamental part of the reproductive mechanism and arousal from genital stimulation is in operation from infancy. There is three millennia of text describing the problem faced by male dominated cultures attempting to control the sex drive of ‘their female’ properties. Religions have a particular preoccupation and proscribe rules for the availability of ‘ their females’ ; dress codes – genital mutilation – slaves – enemies and non believers – penalties for the wayward, even death by stoning. Where a female has commercial value there is infanticide or degree of protection by family and tribe, physical restraints , convents and chastity belts, force marriage. Where our ‘liberal’ rule apply the economically and socially dispossessed abandon girls to become pray to testosterone and sexually frustrated driven males, often assuming justification for rape by their religion. Clearly Rotherham, and evidently our ‘liberal society’ at large , fails to address and protect the pubescent females from themselves as they adrift upon the ocean of free enterprise.

There are tens of thousands of girls of all colours being abused right now by men of all colours; I know too many asian victims and white victims. The race thing just a distraction and overt focus on perps.. Lets convict with zero Tolerance and encourage them scared to come forward to not fear censure. Those poor girls being terrorised as we read need to know they’ll be believed and be safe. And note i didnt mention boys as victims or women as perps, this time!!!

“Wanye”, thanks for your comment. The reason for the focus on ‘Asian’, ‘Pakistani’, ‘muslim’ (take your pick of favoured term) is because the evidence suggests they are far, far more likely to be sex offenders than other groups. I appreciate you might not like the facts, but unfortunately for you this website is called Factcheck.

Just to be absolutely clear, the article states that the prevelance of Type 2 groups was far less. Combine that with the fact that there are far fewer Pakistanis in the UK than white men, and you’ll perhaps understand that the focus on Pakistani men is entirely appropriate. You might even say imperative.

As for the rest of your comments, if there was any truth in them, then surely we would find Japanese, Congolese,Jamaican, Bolivian, Indian,Chinese, etc etc immigrants raping white teenagers to the (statistically) same extent asPakistani men do. But we don’t. So I conclude your argument is a load of old nonsense.

We have; as one father of a groomed child said a problem with a certain number of brown muslim men. To use that father’s words ‘why are they raping our children, we’re not raping theres’ there lies an essential truth, there are no ‘white’ grooming gangs targeting brown children. So lets view this problem for what it is, a race hate crime and act accordingly to stamp it out along with all forms of child abuse.

In many ways Seville, Hall and the BBC are being scapegoated. The sexual revolution happened with the full backing of the establishment. People who pushed abortion and contraception, who pushed extramarital sex, who normalised illegitimacy, who architected sexual anarchy, who attacked marriage: these are the real culprits.

And they’re still running the country.

Seville was a product of a culture. I have little doubt that at the time, what he was doing was seen as perfectly normal, the natural consequence of bra-burning, Rock ‘n’ Roll, rebellion against authority that everyone was celebrating, peace and love, CND and so on. People having fun, unconstrained by the tedious strictures of previous generations.

A big problem in the white Christian community. Endless number of priests and celebrities being caught. Not only that but these despicable people are protected by their community. And since we’re on the subject, after proven sex abuse in the Catholic church and the BBC, isn’t it time the Palace of Westminster re-examined its dodgy past? After all, the likes of Cyril Smith and so many others are still protected by the establishment rule of silence. But don’t hold your breath folks…

There are still 300 perpetrators actively being investigated. for crimes committed from 1999 – known about in 2003 – horrific rapes and abuse What were the number of police being investigated? Over 50 only now being suspended . How many middle ranking council workers knew? It seems the front line workers were trying to do their best. So to the rich and powerful celebs and the BBC must be added new members of the establishment – untouchable it seems – firstly the perpetrators of the crimes – knowing that for many on the regressive left being thought of as being racist actually outweighed the actual crime of rape – they acted with impunity. Then those so called public servants who can cover for each other and hide behind the lack of direct responsibility and accountability (only front line workers can be blamed) – so these are comparable to the workers of the BBC. Finally the liberal media – so into identity politics with its victim narrative. Thank goodness there was the Times journalist – listen to his account on PM last night about his sheer disbelief how even after 2012 these tragic victims could not get justice.

Don’t forget, the state still gives underage girls contraceptives. The same state that is wringing its hands and shedding crocodile tears over Seville.

And the same state applauds as “Elton John”, a man who appeared on stage with dancers dressed as cub scouts – who he then ordered to strip – appropriates boys and deprives them of mate.

Pakistani youths who are victims of sexual grooming are the product of British education system. They find themselves cut off from their cultural heritage and are unable to enjoy the beauty of their literature and poetry. Sexual grooming is a British value and the poor Pakistani youths have adopted this vital British value. Muslim children need state funded Muslim schools with Muslim teachers as role models during their developmental periods. There is no place for a non-Muslim child or a teacher in a Muslim school. A Muslim is a citizen of this tiny global village. The whole world belongs to him/her. He/she does not want to become notoriously monolingual Brit. He /she is well versed in English, Arabic, Urdu and other community languages. Muslim community is paying all sorts of taxes and contributing for the economic, social and spiritual prosperity of the British society at large. Pakistan is only seven hours away from London.

The native Brits have double standards and are hypocrites; they don’t mention the fact that the majority of men who go to countries in East Asia looking for under aged sex are natives European men.
IAhttp://www.londonschoolofislamics.org.uk